Making things tangible efficiently
July 10, 2015
The designers at Atlas Copco’s Industrial Design Competence Center streamline innovation processes and ensure the success rate by utilizing 3D printing and combining it with other techniques into an efficient and structured method. Making things tangible, quickly and cost-effectively helps to align project groups, focus on relevant issues and deliver innovative results.
Projecting the drill plan onto the drill face enhances the intuitiveness of the drill rig and reduces the need for training.
Innovation workshops utilizing 3D printing to accelerate the development
Aligning a project group early by providing both visionary view and tangible examples to streamline discussions is invaluable for innovation and efficiency. “We facilitate innovation workshops utilizing 3D printing combined with LEGO to provide hands-on visualizations of the relevant issues that excel a project group forward”, explained Daniel Sellberg, Manager Vehicle Design. The advantages of these co-creation workshops are shorter development cycles, synergy effects and even unique selling propositions.
Cabin mock-ups create a solid foundation in a constant state of flux
Utilizing the center’s rapid cabin mock-up tool box combined with 3D printing different concepts of components, the designers quickly create a collaboration platform that enables a project group to understand complex and interfering aspects during cabin development early. Martin Larsson, Manager Product Design pointed out: “We meet around the cabin mock-up, test ergonomics, verify operator line-of-sight, conduct usability tests with real operators, optimize cable and air-channel flows and evaluate design solutions to stream line and enable parallel processes.”
Usability tests verify concepts and define the scope long before R&D hours are spent
Providing solid usability test environments that enable project groups to evaluate customers’ experience with full-functional software and hardware interfaces before the R&D project are even started. As part of a feasibility study the designers combine Hifi-prototyping with 3D printing to create a usability test. These tests deliver hard data about the customer satisfaction opportunities, the customer acceptance and the training efficiency of a new control system containing both hardware components such as joysticks, buttons and dials and software components such as screen interfaces.
Deeply engaging virtual reality and augmented reality to improve products
“We are currently developing virtual reality services to enable our customers to experience our products in their environment and under the circumstances of choice,” described Mia Olsson, Manager Visualization Technique. Instead of inviting a customer into a mine to watch from a safe distance, now the customer is able to experience the product up-close from the safety of a Customer Center. The design center also works on augmented reality services to overlay reality with valuable information for production, training and service situations. Rather than to access relevant data about the product through a manual or a computer, the goal is to feed the information right into the beholder’s vision. Hifi-prototyping is the technique to create quick and fully functional representations of a designconcept to allow the user to truly experience the planned interaction before the product is developed. Virtual reality is is a computer-simulated environment that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds. Augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.
Utilizing deeply engaging virtual reality in the training of new operators and service personnel highlights important aspects such as the safe zone around each drill rig.